#Pride101: What the hell do gay people have to be proud of?

We’re proud because despite relentless persecution everywhere we turn—when organized religion viciously attacks and censures and vilifies us in the name of selective morality, when our families disown us, when our elected officials bargain away our equality for hate votes they try to disguise as so-called “religious liberty,” when communities and cities and entire states codify our families into second-class citizenship, when small-importance bakers with the backing of the big-money hate industry take their unhinged loathing of us all the way to the Supreme Court, when our employers fire us, when our landlords evict us, when our police harass us, when our neighbors and colleagues and fellow citizens openly insult and condemn and mock and berate and even beat and kill us—we continue to survive.

We’re proud because pride is the opposite of shame—and despite what systemic bigotry and the ugliest sides of organized religion work so hard to make the world believe, there is nothing shameful about being gay. We’re proud because—thanks to the incredible bravery shown by gay people who lived their lives openly sometimes to the point of being defiantly in the decades before us—we can live our lives more and more openly at home, at work, with our families, on social media … and even on national television.

We're proud because we've worked tirelessly to achieve legal equality in marriage, adoption, parental rights and many other ways that make our families recognized as Families in our states and across our country. And though we have much more to accomplish—and though bigotry disguised as morality and religion and the supposed mandates of constituents work and sometimes succeed at eroding our newfound equalities—we have the momentum and intelligence and drive and humanity and ability to keep driving back the hate as we continue to drive forward with both our newfound and future equalities.

We’re proud because we currently have an openly gay married man as a viable candidate for the Democratic nomination for president--something most of us never even considered would EVER happen--and not only is he enjoying enthusiastic support from Democratic voters, but leading Republicans seem to have learned that while they can attack him for reasons they’d attack any other candidate, attacking him for being gay is completely unacceptable.

We’re proud because through our tireless work and the prevailing powers of common sense and compassion, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and Proposition Hate and the so-called Defense of Marriage Act long ago collapsed onto their illogical, immoral, meritless foundations—and new legislative attempts to dehumanize us gain little to no traction or visibility and soon die on the trash heap as well.

We’re proud because we are smart enough to overcome the self-loathing that our venomous, mindlessly theocratic society forces on us, and we have the power to stop its destructive cycle by fighting back and by making intelligent choices involving sex and drugs and money and relationships and the way we live our lives—and by using our lives as examples of success and humanity and love that other gay people can see and respect and emulate and achieve more and more easily.

We’re proud because after all we’ve been through, the world increasingly continues to notice and respect us and enthusiastically appropriate the often fabulous culture we’ve assembled from the common struggles and glorious diversity of our disparate lives.

We’re proud because more and more often and in more and more contexts our country and our culture see the fact that we’re gay as frankly boring.

We’re proud because especially this month and always all year we’re celebrating with parties and street fairs and parades overflowing with drag queens, leather queens, muscle queens, dad-bod queens, glitter queens, you’d-never-even-know-they-were-queens queens and even straight-but-honorary-queens-for-a-day queens, and together we can see beyond the pride in the parades of our lives and together celebrate the underlying Pride in the parades of our lives.

We’re proud because 50 years ago a small crowd in a bar in New York reached the tipping point in putting up with endless harassment and oppression and instigated a violent retaliation to a police raid that escalated to a week of riots and then to a march for equality that grew unstoppably to a national movement for equality and respect that continues proudly to this day.

Quite simply, we’re proud that we have so incredibly much to be proud of.

I didn’t really know anybody by the time the first pride parade happened soon after I moved to Chicago

So I went by myself to watch it. And, standing among thousands and thousands of cheering, smiling, happy, proud people who were watching with groups of friends and waving at other friends who squeezed by on the crowded sidewalks, I never felt more alone.

It was actually so devastating in my mind that pride weekend literally filled me with dread for the next 15 years I lived in Chicago.

I did notice that first year that the people dancing and waving on the floats looked very happy—and they didn’t have to be surrounded by friends or even anybody as they enjoyed the parade from their glorified perches. So I made up my mind that I needed to make the connections to get myself on a float by the next pride parade.

As I slowly—finally!—made Chicago friends and watched the next few parades with them, I still harbored an irrational, unshakable dread that I’d lose them—or they’d actually leave me—and I’d be alone all over again in the crowds. So I kept trying to figure out how to get myself on a float.

Then I joined the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus. And we marched in the parade! But not on a float. And I very very stupidly decided to wear my rollerblades and they hurt and I was bad at stopping so I kept running into people and I was so miserable I had to hobble home the moment it was over so I couldn’t hang out and celebrate with anyone afterward so as far as I’m concerned the whole experience didn’t count and I don’t want to talk about it.

Then! Finally! I got on a float! And let me tell you: Though standing in a Speedo sucking in your abs and holding on for dear life on a lurching, frequently stopping vehicle technically sucks all the fun out of it, having hundreds of millions (in my fantasies my math says I have hundreds of millions of adoring fans so shut up) of people screaming and cheering for you is ALMOST as awesome as dancing and waving high on a moving platform where the cooling breezes are plenty, the jostling crowds are penned up on the sidewalks below you and the scenery changes by the second to keep everything interesting.

Plus you get to dance to your favorite disco hits.

I got myself onto many more floats for the rest of my years in Chicago. The weather was always perfect, my cheering, adoring fans swelled into the billions (shut up), and the joy and pride were always plenty. And my irrational dread—though never gone—was always in check.

Today is Chicago’s pride parade. My Facebook and Instagram feeds are filled with joyful, excited, rainbow-colored, mostly shirtless pictures of my Chicago friends and acquaintances already celebrating, and while I’m thrilled and proud to have (eventually) been a part of those traditions, our dramatically more subdued Cedar Rapids pride festival next weekend is now WAY more my speed. And not my Speedo.

So I wish all of you celebrating pride in Chicago today—whether on the sidewalks or on a float—an awesome day and an awesome experience both personally and with everyone around you. I’ll be happily painting my room—and no doubt dancing to my favorite disco hits and/or belting to my favorite show tunes—instead. And we all can’t stop the music.

#Pride101:

Virtually every pride parade and public event draws a crowd of hate-filled, mouth-frothing religious bigots carrying signs (notice the ever-popular message in this photo: GAY = Got AIDS Yet?) and screaming at us with bullhorns and often trying to goad us into physical fights so they can videotape them and whimper to the police about the cruel persecution they endure just for expressing their First Amendment rights. At bigger events like the Chicago Pride Parade, they're walled off in pens like the rabid swine they are at the end of the route where they're more of a nuisance than a violence-inciting threat. But at smaller events like the Cedar Rapids Pride Fest, they wander freely in much smaller numbers at the perimeters, hauling massive signs as if they were crosses and yelling into bullhorns and goading us from afar so they can run like the cowards they are if they feel outnumbered and/or want to stoke their wannabe persecution complexes. But we keep showing up to our events, not letting their cruel, puerile, relentless harassment undermine our celebration of who we are how far we've come. THIS IS WHY WE USE THE WORD PRIDE.

Things you might see in a Nordic pride parade

Only in Decorah can you set out your chairs at 6:45 am to reserve your spot for the 10:30 am Nordic Fest parade and then go back to bed secure in the knowledge that they’ll still be there

We got a spot directly across from the rømmegrøt stand, where after the race I will gorge myself on its sugary, creamy, puddingy deliciousness.

We'll always care

We finally got Scott to be the Deena to our Effie and Lorell! But I think that’s MORE than enough of this Scott-in-the-middle stuff, and we’ll relegate him to the back where he belongs post-haste.

This morning’s three miles were muggy (which I just learned is a mostly Midwestern word that’s our polite way of saying moist), though we felt the illusion of cooling breezes once we were moving through the air. But boy, once we finished running we sure were sweaty and moist. The only real problem we faced on this morning’s run was multiple near-grisly-death experiences; there was apparently a 6:30-am-flash-mob-except-instead-of-the-high-school-drama-department-dancing-to-“Thriller”-in-a-mall-it-was-cars-dispatched-to-encounter-and-almost-not-see-us-at-nearly-every-intersection pride parade. I always give a little thank-you wave to every car that stops for us, but I also always worry that the drivers think I’m self-entitledly hand-yelling at them to STOP YOU SELFISHLY UNSAFE IDIOT BECAUSE WE HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY and they’ll get to work and talk smack about us to the steno pool. (Dear every driver who ever encounters me at an intersection: I’m pretty sure that I do indeed have the right of way, but you have the giant vehicular-manslaughter machine that would totally win in a game of Intersection Smackdown! against my rippable flesh and brittle bones so I ALWAYS defer to whatever you want to do.)

But where was I? Let’s see: Dreamgirls reference ... moist ... moist again ... gratuitously long compound adjective ... Michael Jackson reference ... talk of grisly death ... gratuitous use of all caps ... antiquated euphemism for a group of secretaries ... parenthetical side note that was not meant for you and you were rude to read it ... what did I forget? Oh, yes: a contextless mention of Rob so he gets included in this rambling post that somehow never got around to mentioning him organically. Because it’s more than Scott. It’s more than me. Whatever miles we run, we are a family.

What have you done today to make you feel proud?

June is pride month for most cities, but Cedar Rapids has our pride fest in July out of sisterly courtesy to Chicago so they don’t lose out to us on all the good parade float rentals. (YOU’RE WELCOME.) But somebody wasn’t so considerate and beat us out on the readable-size pride-fest banner we’ve hung over our entrance. Ours may be slightly small, but it’s just as mightily jubilant.

I didn’t really know anybody by the time the first pride parade happened soon after I moved to Chicago

So I went by myself to watch it. And, standing among thousands and thousands of cheering, smiling, happy, proud people who were watching with groups of friends and waving at other friends who squeezed by on the crowded sidewalks, I never felt more alone.

It was actually so devastating in my mind that pride weekend literally filled me with dread for the next 15 years I lived in Chicago.

I did notice that first year that the people dancing and waving on the floats looked very happy—and they didn’t have to be surrounded by friends or even anybody as they enjoyed the parade from their glorified perches. So I made up my mind that I needed to make the connections to get myself on a float by the next pride parade.

As I slowly—finally!—made Chicago friends and watched the next few parades with them, I still harbored an irrational, unshakable dread that I’d lose them—or they’d actually leave me—and I’d be alone all over again in the crowds. So I kept trying to figure out how to get myself on a float.

Then I joined the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus. And we marched in the parade! But not on a float. And I very very stupidly decided to wear my rollerblades and they hurt and I was bad at stopping so I kept running into people and I was so miserable I had to hobble home the moment it was over so I couldn’t hang out and celebrate with anyone afterward so as far as I’m concerned the whole experience didn’t count and I don’t want to talk about it.

Then! Finally! I got on a float! And let me tell you: Though standing in a Speedo sucking in your abs and holding on for dear life on a lurching, frequently stopping vehicle technically sucks all the fun out of it, having hundreds of millions (in my fantasies my math says I have hundreds of millions of adoring fans so shut up) of people screaming and cheering for you is ALMOST as awesome as dancing and waving high on a moving platform where the cooling breezes are plenty, the jostling crowds are penned up on the sidewalks below you and the scenery changes by the second to keep everything interesting.

Plus you get to dance to your favorite disco hits.

I got myself onto many more floats for the rest of my years in Chicago. The weather was always perfect, my cheering, adoring fans swelled into the billions (shut up), and the joy and pride were always plenty. And my irrational dread—though never gone—was always in check.

Today is Chicago’s pride parade. My Facebook and Instagram feeds are filled with joyful, excited, rainbow-colored pictures of my Chicago friends and acquaintances already celebrating, and while I’m thrilled and proud to have (eventually) been a part of those traditions, our dramatically more subdued Cedar Rapids pride festival in two weeks is now WAY more my speed. And not my Speedo.

So I wish all of you celebrating pride in Chicago today—whether on the sidewalks or on a float—an awesome day and an awesome experience both personally and with everyone around you. I’ll be happily cleaning the garage—and no doubt dancing to my favorite disco hits—instead. And we all can’t stop the music.

What the hell do gay people have to be proud of?

On this, the Gay High Holidays of the Tony Awards, I offer again my annual explanation and celebration of what gay pride means from my own journey and my own experience and my own big-ol’-proud-gay-man perspective:

We’re proud because despite relentless persecution everywhere we turn—when organized religion viciously attacks and censures and vilifies us in the name of selective morality, when our families disown us, when our elected officials bargain away our equality for hate votes they try to disguise as so-called “religious liberty,” when communities and cities and entire states codify our families into second-class citizenship, when small-importance bakers with the backing of the big-money hate industry take their unhinged loathing of us all the way to the Supreme Court, when our employers fire us, when our landlords evict us, when our police harass us, when our neighbors and colleagues and fellow citizens openly insult and condemn and mock and berate and even beat and kill us—we continue to survive.

We’re proud because pride is the opposite of shame—and despite what systemic bigotry and the ugliest sides of organized religion work so hard to make the world believe, there is nothing shameful about being gay. We’re proud because—thanks to the incredible bravery shown by gay people who lived their lives openly sometimes to the point of being defiantly in the decades before us—we can live our lives more and more openly at home, at work, with our families, on social media … and even on national television.

We're proud because we've worked tirelessly to achieve legal equality in marriage, adoption, parental rights and many other ways that make our families recognized as Families in our states and across our country. And though we have much more to accomplish—and though bigotry disguised as morality and religion and the supposed mandates of constituents work and sometimes succeed at eroding our newfound equalities—we have the momentum and intelligence and drive and humanity and ability to keep driving back the hate as we continue to drive forward with both our newfound and future equalities.

We’re proud because through our tireless work and the prevailing powers of common sense and compassion, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and Proposition Hate and the so-called Defense of Marriage Act have collapsed in on their illogical, immoral, meritless foundations—and new legislative attempts to dehumanize us gain little to no traction or visibility and soon die on the trash heap as well.

We’re proud because we are smart enough to overcome the self-loathing that our venomous, mindlessly theocratic society forces on us, and we have the power to stop its destructive cycle by fighting back and by making intelligent choices involving sex and drugs and money and relationships and the way we live our lives—and by using our lives as examples of success and humanity and love that other gay people can see and respect and emulate and achieve more and more easily.

We’re proud because after all we’ve been through, the world increasingly continues to notice and respect us and enthusiastically appropriate the often fabulous culture we’ve assembled from the common struggles and glorious diversity of our disparate lives.

We’re proud because more and more often and in more and more contexts our country and our culture see the fact that we’re gay as frankly boring.

We’re proud because especially this month and always all year we’re celebrating with parties and street fairs and parades overflowing with drag queens, leather queens, muscle queens, dad-bod queens, glitter queens, you’d-never-even-know-they-were-queens queens and even straight-but-honorary-queens-for-a-day queens, and together we can see beyond the pride in the parades of our lives and together celebrate the underlying Pride in the parades of our lives.

Quite simply, we’re proud that we have so incredibly much to be proud of.

True fact from the front lines of tonight’s bitterly cold Holiday DeLight Parade:

It is impossible to march, smile, wave, execute an occasional chaîné and maintain a credible façade of a paragon-of-masculinity dancing lumberjack when you have a full-diluvian runny nose. But at least my new button stayed on.

Technically, I’ll be a LumberJake

I’m going to be a traditional Dancing Christmas Lumberjack in one of Cedar Rapids’ very few lighted parades tonight, which means you’re going to come watch the time-honored holiday tradition of the Lighting of the Dancing Christmas Lumberjack, right? Of course you are.

(Truth be told, I’ve been needing to sew a button back on my red plaid shirt for a while now, so I’m really only doing the parade to force myself to catch up on my mending. So if for no other reason, you should come watch the parade to see my newly reattached button. (It’s the second one down.))

Flashback Friday: Bend and Snap Edition

Apparently five years ago right now I was dancing in colorful underpants on a float in the Chicago pride parade. Now I'm wearing tearaway pants in a musical about a boy who fights The Man to dance ballet. So apparently nothing has changed. Except now I also wear tap shoes.